Data Protection Manager 2010 - Incremental Backups

[LinkZ]

Hi all,

 

Had a search around but couldn't find anything on this. I'm testing out DPM 2010 before purchasing it (coming from BackupAssist), it seems like a really good piece of software however I am having problems with the way it appears to do incremental backups.

 

As a test I have it backing up a 2008 R2 box with a full C: volume backup, system state, and bare metal recovery. The protection group is set to short-term backup to disk (it's in a VM so can't test out backup tape), retention range is 5 days and the synchronization frequency is every 2 hours. Recovery points are 11:00 & 16:00 Monday-Friday, the same with application recovery points.

 

If I buy it I will set it up similar however I will only do 1 backup every evening short term and setup a full tape backup every Saturday.

 

At the moment I can't see how to view the files in the week day backups as an incremental. With BackupAssist Monday-Friday I have a BKF file which contains only the files edited/created on that day, when I look into the recovery points throughout the day in DPM it shows me the files for the entire drive, not only the new files like I was expecting. I can't see how to seperate out what is new compared to the previous recovery point.

 

Any ideas, or am I just looking at this in the wrong way?

[oxide54]

ok my explanation my not be 100% technically correct but:

 

DPM creates a replica of the whole drive, then all it does is store the changes, the bits that have changed, so in essence its one full backup then incrementals ever after, but don't think of it in tradational terms because as far as restoring a file you go to the recovery section and select that day and it "presents" a full backup for that day.

[oxide54]

basically although its doing an incremental backup its not presenting you an incremental backup what its presenting is that volume or share or whatever at a point in time,

[strawberry]

it doesn't do incremental backups, the 2 hour sync is similar to a incremental but the recovery points are a snapshot of the data you store on that machine at that time.

[oxide54]

thats right, but its important to know each recovery point isn't a full backup like with a traditional software, it is just the changes, effectitevly and incremental backup

[LinkZ]

Thanks for the replies. I can see why it does it that way, makes sense. Think i'll go ahead and buy it, I've been able to do everything I've needed to when testing.

[oxide54]

how are you planning on protecting the DPM server?another DPM server or tape?

[deano]

We use DPM 2010 here too and run short term to disk and then long term to LTO tape. The short term solution syncs as you suggest for 30 days and tapes are one every week, one every month and then one every year giving a Grandfather, Father, Son approach.

 

Make sure you set up the alerts aswell. I have all alerts at different times but the best is the tape details. It alerts when tapes are ready to be removed from the drive and also alerts when certain tapes are needed.

[oxide54]

@deano do you only backup monthly to tape?

 

we do a full tape backup daily here, the disk 2 disk for convience only, especially give the SAN is 3 feet away from the DPM server. wouldn't be much use in a fire, hence the daily tapes to the fire safe

[deano]

That was an old setup. the one i'm toying with at the moment is attached. We have a 16TB NAS connected via iSCSI and a 48 tape LTO Ultrium

Edited November 23, 2010 by deano
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[oxide54]

cool, i actualy like the fact that daily tape backups are full backups. i used to hate having to pull upto 4x tape sets to restore a folder.

 

mine is setup to backup to tape everyday.

 

daily 1.00am

weekly --> monday 1.am

monthly --> first monday 1.am

 

the reason i do the keepies on the monday is we are more likely to be off on fridays due to insets etc. and we don't have an auto changer, we have two DPM servers one for the user data and one for everything else and the user data one needs tywo tapes nowadays. so although i've increased the timeout limit, it works come in the morning change the tape done by 9/10

[techie08]

Whats the total amout of data that you guys are backing up on this? Ive just installed the trial of DPM and looking protecting just servers which total 400gb and not staff or student data which totals 2tb. Currently im doing this all to using Backup Exec 12.5 to a LTO3 auto loader

 

Has anyone got fault tollerance raid on the storage groups? i Have 4 x 1tb drives in my server for storage and im not sure whether to use all the space or have them as a RAID config.

 

Also will the data going onto tape be compressed? how long would it take to archive to a single LTO3 Drive?

[oxide54]

Both my DPM servers are RAID, can't remember which? definately not RAID5 though.

 

DPM2 (user data) - was orgininaly Raid 5 with no BBU - result slow as hell. - i think its raid 10 now.

DPM1 (all my other servers) - Raid 6

 

I also found multiple smaller protection groups is better than less large protection groups, as the disk seek time seems to improve.

 

btw --> all performance issues i'm talking about were reading from Disk to tape. The initial D2D from the source server to the DPM was fine, and writing test data to a tape was fine. just writing a DPM backup to tape, we narrowed it down the RAID level / BBU and the protection group size. i also saw performance increases when doing restores after breaking the protection groups into multiple smaller ones.

 

 

Data to tape is compressed. but on a 400gb/800gb (uncompressed/compressed) tape. I see DPM writing 450/490gb so don't expect much from it.

 

can't remember what my total data size is? but I know DPM 1 uses one tape (400/800) and DPM 2 uses two (400/800) tapes/

 

DPM 1 is set to start at 5.00am this is done by 8-9am.

DPM 2 starts at 1.am (we could start it at 5am now, i moved it earlier because of the performance problems we were having) and this definitely ready for the next tape by the time we get in. 7-8am

[ful56_uk]

are you guys using dpm in an hpyer v Environment? I am in an vsphere Environment, not i know i cant use dpm to snap shot the vsphere server at hyper visor level but i would like to install the agent on them and backup everything inside,

 

but i am a little unsure about the restore process, lets say one of my servers is buggered and my only option is to resotre from backup.

how would i do this in a vsphere Environment, create a new server then restore on to that?

[LinkZ]

Can DPM write multiple protection groups to a single tape? My plan at the moment is to write the entire backup servers data to an LTO-5 tape (which should comprise of around 3 seperate protection groups) every saturday, and at the end of every term.

[gshaw]

Just been reading the quickstart documentation...

 

Release Notes: Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2010

"DPM 2010 does not provide system protection for Windows Server 2003"

 

Which although I can understand as I guess it uses newer features in 2008 it's rather annoying as we won't be moving to 2008 until the virtual environment is implemented and settled in. In which case in a VMWare environment with Server 2003 VMs what would be the best solution... just backup the VM itself via the VMWare APIs for system protection then use DPM just for data?

[LinkZ]

Just been reading the quickstart documentation...

 

Release Notes: Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2010

"DPM 2010 does not provide system protection for Windows Server 2003"

 

That's a pain, I was looking to do that. At least it can still protect the files on them though. Anyone know if it can backup SQL Server 2005 Express, it says in the documentation that it will backup SQL servers but nothing about the express versions.

 

EDIT: Just tested it on a VM, backup of SQL Express works.

Edited November 25, 2010 by LinkZ

[deano]

@oxide54 - Do you backup any Hyper V with your DPM? I have a blade setup with 6 hyper v servers but when se to back these up, the servers restart and blue screen

[oxide54]

no i'm vsphere based here, I don't backup the hosts. I do have the configuration documented though and the documentation is backed up,

 

i then backup the VM's in the same way you would if they were physical machines, agent installed etc.

 

which is blue screening the VM or the Hyper-V host?

 

I would have gone for veam but DPM was cheap and works very nicely for us.

 

 

 

i don't won't to get into a hyper-v vs ... debate but I think hyper-v is too immature a product to use in production use, microsoft have a long track record of producing products that are okay after a number versions have been released. I suprised how good DPM is after 3 release. (i suspect they sub-contracted it ) having said that I can see why people go for it. integration with products like DPM and cost factor.

 

the way I see it is like using windows for file and print sharing 10 years ago, nice idea, but wouldn't want to trust it in production use. especially in our case where every server is virtualized ( except the DPM servers because they need hudge disk space, and direct access to tape drives)

[ful56_uk]

So if you use vsphere, do you just backup the contents of the vm's how would you go about doing a restore?

 

Also what type of back schedule do you use, I am getting my self a little confused with the terminology what's a full back every day? Are the recovery points just snap shots of that point in time not full backups

[oxide54]

what type of restore?? a full restore of a vm or of some files?

 

in a complete disaster?

 

install esxi.

 

create a vm, boot off windows cd, select restore from backup, give it the vhd file you restored from the tape.

[oxide54]

lso what type of back schedule do you use, I am getting my self a little confused with the terminology what's a full back every day? Are the recovery points just snap shots of that point in time not full backups

 

it makes a copy of the whole thing, this is the replica.

then it stores differences between the replica and the current state in the recovery point.

 

oversimplistic explanation, but its about it.

[Bruce123]

I was surprised when I read your post, as I'd already seen this on their website.

 

System Center Data Protection Manager: 2010 Overview

 

Continuous data protection of Windows application and file servers to seamlessly integrated disk, tape, and cloud — with support for a growing list of Microsoft technologies, such as:

 

•Windows Server from 2003 through 2008 R2

 

If the product can provide system protection from 2008 and 2008 R2, but not 2003, then I think that should have made this clear on their website.

 

I'd assumed that because 2003 was listed it could provide system protection for it. A real shame that, how many Schools/Colleges have upgraded all their servers to 2008 yet?

 

Bruce.

[oxide54]

I was surprised when I read your post, as I'd already seen this on their website.

 

System Center Data Protection Manager: 2010 Overview

 

Continuous data protection of Windows application and file servers to seamlessly integrated disk, tape, and cloud — with support for a growing list of Microsoft technologies, such as:

 

•Windows Server from 2003 through 2008 R2

 

If the product can provide system protection from 2008 and 2008 R2, but not 2003, then I think that should have made this clear on their website.

 

I'd assumed that because 2003 was listed it could provide system protection for it. A real shame that, how many Schools/Colleges have upgraded all their servers to 2008 yet?

 

Bruce.

 

it does system protection not bare metal restore.